Traditionally, the Paris-Nice "Race to the Sun" and its parallel event in Italy, the Tirreno-Adriatico, mark the point where the cycling season suddenly gets serious. The first great one-day race, Milan-San Remo, is a matter of days away; the major Tour contenders begin to show their form for the first time; spring Classics such as Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders hove into view.

Just over two years into their life as a racing entity, Great Britain's Team Sky go into this key part of the season full tilt, with confidence, well, sky-high. Last weekend brought victory in the Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne semi-classic for Mark Cavendish; the weekend before a time-trial win for Bradley Wiggins and the overall title in the Tour of Algarve for the Australian Richie Porte.

Two years since their arrival in professional cycling with the tag of a team that would do things differently, Sky are not merely part of the furniture but one of the strongest squads in the sport. In Paris-Nice, for example, they will field two potential winners in Porte and Wiggins, with a third, the Tour of Spain runner-up Chris Froome, sidelined with a chest infection, while in Tirreno, the world champion Cavendish will be leader.

It has been quite a transformation, insiders believe. The Canadian Mike Barry, a veteran of 10 years in the professional peloton, says: "The first year was average performance – not the best in the world but top five. People criticised the performance but it wasn't that bad, the second year was better and already this year the guys are riding bloody well."

Wiggins believes Sky are currently "the best team in the world, we perform consistently every time we go out", although the trainer Rod Ellingworth believes the best is to come: "We will build for at least another two years. It will be a while until we reach the pinnacle."

The year 2010 was a troubled one. There were changes of personnel as the team bedded down – the lead directeur sportif, Scott Sunderland, left in May and the press officer Brian Nygaard went soon after – and the soigneur Txema González died from sickness at the Tour of Spain, while Wiggins had a disappointing Tour de France. "It was like when you buy a new house," Barry says. "Nothing is ever perfect when you set it up from scratch. And most of the senior management hadn't worked in professional cycling before."

There are several reasons for Sky's turnaround. The coaching staff has been strengthened, with the American Bobby Julich and the Norwegian Kurt Asle Arvesen joining Ellingworth. The physiologist Tim Kerrison has grown into the role after a year learning about the sport. The information flow between riders, coaches, directeurs sportifs and backup staff has been tightened.

What matters most, says Ellingworth, is that the "old guard" who arrived at the team from within professional cycling have accepted the ways of the ingénues from British Cycling – mainly from within the track team – who knew relatively little about the pro world on founding Sky. "The biggest change was the relationship between new people to the sport and people who'd been in it for a long time, acceptance of ideas by the old guard."

Ellingworth, for one, noticed the difference. "We were all 'performance, performance, performance' at British Cycling; we've realised you need to keep a sponsor happy. It was a challenge going from being lottery funded to commercially funded. There are three or four film crews following us, sponsors sitting in the team car with you."

Barry says: "Everyone is more confident, they know their roles better. The first year was like high school, now we're at college. It's gone from being a competent team to the top team in the world for infrastructure and support. They're ticking boxes at every level."

Barry believes the key was the decision not to focus heavily on the Tour in 2011. Another difference Barry and Ellingworth highlight is the arrival of Mark Cavendish. "He's a leader, pulls the riders together, expects a lot of himself, his personal expectations rub off on the rest of the team," Barry says. "Lance [Armstrong] was very similar in this way – if you have a personality like that on the team who is very confident it lifts all the team. There aren't many can lead a team like that."

Ellingworth says that the management had to adapt from an Olympic focus to a world where a constant flow of results is needed to keep momentum going and sponsors contented.

"From a British Cycling point of view, the big moment is 2012. For Team Sky, every weekend is a big moment. The detail we go into at British Cycling, I expected we could do it at Sky, then realised we couldn't physically do it. Dave Brailsford adopted the motto, 'do the simple things really well' – logistics, planning, support staff – we let the lads race and we cut out the fancy stuff."

The sensation, though, of cycling's early season is British, but he is not Cavendish, Wiggins or Thomas. A 27-year-old Devonian named Jonathan Tiernan-Locke is the man who has turned heads and made headlines.

Tiernan-Locke's jersey is not the blue and black of Sky but the quite similar black of the Endura racing team, a third division squad backed by a Scottish cycle clothing maker.

In mid-February, Tiernan-Locke reigned supreme in the south of France, notching up five wins in less than two weeks, two stages and the overall in the Tour of the Mediterranean – previous winners of which include Eddy Merckx – and a stage and the overall in the two-day Tour du Haut Var, another classic race won in the past by the likes of Sean Kelly and Laurent Jalabert. Both times he showed mountain-racing ability that had observers purring: displays of climbing skill such as this are rare.

JTL as he is known, has emerged late, but not from nowhere: he was a talented youngster who lost three years of his career with the Epstein-Barr virus before being picked up by the British squad Rapha-Condor-Sharp, for whom he won the King of the Mountains prize in last year's Tour of Britain. Now he is being courted by several World Tour teams and is likely to move up to the higher division, perhaps midway through this season.